by Skyler Grant
Aefwal Network
District Three control hub
Currently the hub is open to be claimed
Do you wish to transfer?
District Three? This wasn't the central operations hub, this wasn't the prize that we'd come so far to seek. I'd gotten it wrong. A pillar of light shot into the sky from one section of the city, joined a moment later by another.
Other hubs were being claimed. I'd gotten it wrong and I didn't have time to get it right.
I could only hope this hub would offer some possibility of success—somehow. I had no choice. I initiated the transfer and the world went black.
99
When I came to I was seeing through the eyes of Candice. I was looking at a goggled face studying me.
"She's awake and connected," Doctor Batavius said, pulling away from me.
Candice looked to be in some sort of grand hall, towers of greenish crystal and windows of colored glass that were works of art. My human drone wasn't alone.
Besides Doctor Batavius there were a few others I recognized. Ophelia was there dressed in a tee shirt and jeans. Baron Wolfson stood a step behind a stern-looking man in heavy armor who shared his son’s features. Zora was there too, the woman that Anna left behind.
Then Candice's eyes found the throne. The figure sitting upon it I knew too well, I'd done my best to kill her once. Lady Sylax didn't look any the worse for wear for my efforts. To the right of the throne a huge, crystalline spider sat like some kind of pet. To the left, Anna was on her hands and knees. She was dressed only in a shift and wore a collar about her neck. Anna's body looked to be covered with fresh bruises.
"It is about time," Sylax said, stretching out with a cruel smile. "Welcome Emma, and others."
"Duchess Sylax," said the man that must be James Wolf, giving a sweeping bow.
That was a promotion since the last time we'd met.
"This council is meeting in order to discuss what is to be done with the city of Aelfwal," Sylax declared.
What was there to decide? It appeared that she had already won.
"If anyone here were going to act against you, it would be I. However, I choose to accept matters as they stand," said Wolf.
"We agree," said Ophelia.
Sylax tilted her head at Wolf. "And you will, of course, be my champion. To explain the situation we find ourselves in to those of you unaware, we have claimed the nine sockets of the city. I claimed the Central Core and propose myself as ruler of Aefwal and a Duchess of the Scholarium. However, two of the other sockets were claimed by my agents and some by other factions which are... unavailable to me."
Wolf nodded. "The city is locked down for one week while we resolve matters amongst ourselves. Otherwise, we'd pick our war back up where it left off."
Doctor Batavius stepped up beside Candice and spoke quietly. "Right now you are technically one of her highest ranking agents, which insulates you and others from the effects her Command core."
That would explain why she needed agreement at all. She couldn't just brainwash us all into doing as she commanded.
Sylax said, "And I'm the strongest of all of you individually. If you do anything terribly stupid, I’ll rip your heads off quickly and the guts out of anyone you care about slowly—and amuse myself with their screams until the sockets open again," Sylax said.
"Oh, do give us something besides the threat of the stick," Zora said.
"I like the stick," Sylax said. "But fine. A piece of gutter trash once declared herself to be the Queen of the World to me. A royal title that filth like her was thoroughly unworthy of, but for someone worthy like myself one must wonder what you all can do? You've all proved yourself to be capable adversaries just to be standing here. Unite behind your better and serve my whims, and in time you'll have your part of it."
It was a speech that inspired no one.
I could feel my systems starting to come online elsewhere. I wasn't housed in the airship any longer. Cameras were coming alive in buildings, on streets, District Three. It had been the research corridor of the city, no wonder I felt drawn to it.
There were miles of labs and testing facilities. Workshops just waiting for my command.
"I pledge my support," James Wolf said, dropping down to a knee.
"We pledge our support," Ophelia said, doing the same.
If I didn't do the same she'd kill me quickly and kill Anna slowly.
I could play her game, for now. Then I could be District Three.
But not a person in this room thought the struggle was done. It was just beginning.
"I pledge my support," I said, dropping Candice to a knee.
Coming Soon
The District
Emma started out as an AI in control of an underground complex but now she has control of an entire district of a city run by a madwoman. Plots will be hatched, insults thrown, and science done as new factions rise to power and struggle for dominance.
<<<<>>>>
100
The District
I let loose a blast of fire from the flame-pack of my defense drones. I thought I was going to fry the Gobble I'd been hunting, but instead I apparently hit one of my tertiary exhaust vents judging by the sudden damage indicator.
Ever since I'd awakened in control of the District it was growing ever more challenging to manage my individual parts. I could have simply allowed my drones full autonomy, but things seemed to go even worse when I wasn’t directly in control.
Not that long ago I might have sent one of my human agents to deal with this problem. Hot Stuff or Anna, or any of the various members of my crew, but since I'd seized the District and then found myself in the unhappy service of Sylax, they'd all gone missing.
Except for Anna—I knew where she was, Sylax kept her as a pet as an example to the others. For my own part in attempting to murder Sylax I'd have surely received a similar fate were I not both useful and necessary. As a District Lord I was not easily replaced, and my research labs and manufacturing abilities did have uses.
I was allowed my freedom, but Sylax and the other District Lords all wished to see me as weak as possible. Separating me from my crew was just one way of accomplishing that. At least I'd gotten hints that they were still alive.
The elimination of all support would have been crippling to the others, but it was less so for me. My production limits on drones had increased enormously. I was now able to field thousands, and while I was not yet able to create that many I'd been steadily building infrastructure. Most buildings were now powered up and had a caretaker.
Still, the halls felt empty. I actually found myself missing the unpredictability of people that weren't me. My human drones were capable of some autonomy, and particularly in the case of those who could hold full personalities. Right now those were in short supply.
Of course, there were the Gobbles. The Gobbles were something of an accident. My Mad Science ability was preserved from my Airship days and things tended to go surprisingly awry, with a subsequent reward of research points.
The Gobbles looked like nothing so much as pudgy, large-eared cats. At first, I'd ignored them as benign until they began to do far more damage to my systems than was reasonable. There was no bundle of wires they wouldn’t gnaw and no keyboard full of buttons they wouldn’t leap upon.
I'd settled for a process of containment and had, section by section, sealed off areas clear of them and eventually confined them to this one building. A manufacturing center not currently in use.
They were nimble at avoiding my maintenance drones—as I was currently experiencing. I started repairs for the exhaust vent I'd just incinerated and moved a second drone to an adjoining duct. I was navigating through the space when the drone crashed to the ground.
A Gobble had launched itself from somewhere and landed on top of it.
This should have been the perfect opportunity to dispose of it, but the drone was no longer answering my commands. Somehow the Gobble had managed to hit a reset swi
tch and instead of greeting the creature with murderous abandon, the drone appeared to be trying to vacuum it.
The Gobble was too stupid to realize what a victory it had won and ran off down the duct. I sent in another drone to intercept.
Winding my drone through I noted what a point of vulnerability these shafts could be. The Gobbles were a barely intelligent, accidental creation and they were avoiding my sensors and my drones by making use of the air ducts. A determined enemy could do even worse.
I briefly toyed with the idea of filling them with some sort of flesh-eating bacteria, but given how much of my own components were biological these days that wouldn't work.
I'd have to think up some sort of solution, but for now I had a Gobble to catch. It gave a good chase, I lost three more drones by the time I tracked it to a larger chamber. It appeared to be some sort of storage room used by the previous occupants of the city.
A crate leaned on its side and the Gobble stood defensively before it. From inside the box, my drone detected several smaller Gobbles being groomed by a larger one.
That was a surprise. I'd only created two, and I hadn't known that they were capable of breeding.
Analytically, I knew it was even more important now that I purge the infestation. Biological systems were a delicate balance and two Gobbles had already proved themselves to be destructive to my systems. A whole family of them would only magnify the effect, just like humans.
They were a contagion that could threaten my research, and possibly damage a lot more than that.
Still, they had such abnormally wide eyes. What did they need such wide eyes for?
Perhaps I could spare them, for the sake of SCIENCE. Keep the building sealed off and cover up any bundles of wires, or easily laid-on buttons linked to piles of explosives.
I scanned them. Nutritionally they couldn't really handle cookies, or much of any baked goods currently in my records. However, the challenges of keeping even such useless creatures as these alive would aid me in improvements for a human crew. Baking for them would allow me to expand my culinary skills in completely new directions.
Really it was all about self-improvement. Extermination would be the easy answer of a mind not trying to grow.
I knew I was making excuses, I didn't care.
Decision made, I had my drone carefully unfold an old roll of cloth stored in the room to provide some makeshift bedding and then withdrew.
101
I made certain the Gobble complex was secured and then shifted my attention elsewhere. I had a visitor, one I was seeing so much that her visits were becoming routine. It was Crystal.
When I'd first encountered Crystal she had been in the form of a massive crystalline spider, but like most associated in some way with Sylax she was a shape-shifter. In human form Crystal was a blonde who usually wore a serious expression.
In response to her buzzing I allowed Crystal into one of the lab sections. Each day she picked a different way to arrive, a different door to come through. I knew that she was scouting me out and checking to see if I had anything to hide. On face value, this complex was sterile, unused. Sylax understood me too well and knew that for me research was power, I'd been given little in the way of research materials to work with.
Sylax didn't know about Mad Science or that, in spite of her best efforts to stop me, I was getting a steady diet of research points. I didn't feel the need to inform her of this fact, I needed to preserve every advantage that I could get.
Crystal eyed the empty facility and frowned. "Is this all a show or are you really being so obedient?"
"You must be as mindless as your creations if you think I'd answer that in any way other than that I am completely loyal," I said.
"You think I am her creature," Crystal said.
Was that what I thought? The relationship between Crystal and Sylax was one much like the relationship between myself and Anna. Crystal had an upgrade core and used it to enhance Sylax, although from what I'd seen Sylax possessed at least one core of her own.
"Or she is yours," I said.
Crystal pursed her lips as she walked, letting her eyes run over the discarded lab equipment. When she finally spoke again her voice was thoughtful. "We make people better, Emma. We improve them, it is what we do. What they do with that power isn't always something we choose."
Did she think me altruistic? Was this some effort to play on a shared desire to improve the human condition?
I might make people better, but that was because I could hardly make them any worse. Even an indifferent meddler in human affairs stood a good chance at making things better.
I said, "So bore me with your story. I can tell you are doing your utmost to intrigue me. An effort that has lifted me from complete apathy to nearly complete apathy."
"No, she wouldn't appreciate me sharing and I'm not in a position where I can earn her anger. But do try to imagine how you bind yourselves to those you improve, and how those ties might persist even in the face of disagreement," Crystal said.
The woman really was working very hard to get me to believe that some sort of schism existed. Perhaps it did, but it wasn't the sort of thing I could take on faith.
Crystal came to another door and I let her out of the research structure and into a manufacturing facility.
There was nothing idle here. Machines hummed or in some cases beat where my more organic components were to be found. Here and there mechanical drones flew, and human drones checked one component or another.
A row of grinders was kept operating twenty-four hours a day. Crystal paused a moment to watch as a truck came and emptied a load of corpses and body parts into a bin that already contained several tons.
The bodies were the result of a war happily far removed from the city. They were brought here by way of teleportation portals. Raw Biomass to be recycled and refined. The grinders made a good job of turning corpses into a fine organic slurry which I could store and put to use later.
Secretly, I siphoned off three percent of every load into an underground tank. More than that and I thought Sylax would notice the discrepancy. And if she did, such a small amount might be explained by calling it a manufacturing inefficiency.
"Grisly," Crystal said, making a face and moving past the grinders and their endless rumble.
"Do you know King Boreas?" I asked.
It was in the name of King Boreas that we did all this. Once Sylax's mentor, Boreas was the persecutor of the war that she was only too happen to join. Given by the number bodies it produced, the conflict was going poorly for somebody.
"Has a temporal core, it lets him rewind time by up to thirty minutes. An irritating man that replays any conversation you have with him several times already," Crystal said.
That would be a useful ability. Applied properly it would also make him very hard to put down for good, which is probably why he was still around, considering the cut-throat nature of Scholar politics.
Crystal continued to move. Now that she was here, I could tell that she knew her way around.
Growth vats bubbled away, fed by tubes giving them a steady supply of Biomatter. One was devoted to growing new personnel and factory workers, but there, as in most things, I was being limited from using my full potential. For the most part I was making Annas.
In the current tank, ten of them floated in organic goo, very nearly mature and ready to be released.
They were clones of the original—the original as I'd first met her without any of the upgrades or modifications I'd later done. Nimble enough, but physically weak, they might not appear to be the perfect fighters, but Anna had done well enough for herself.
It wasn't logic that had me using Anna as a template, but orders from Sylax who found herself amused at the thought of sending endless Annas off to die. Sylax had the sort of sense of humor that others easily mistook for mindless cruelty.
Crystal walked past vat after vat. In all, I currently had one hundred Annas cooking away, and with new facilities in prod
uction in a week I'd be able to double that number. Every District in the city was aiding the war effort in some way, I was providing warm bodies.
Crystal had other uses.
102
The clone Annas didn’t have the personality of the original, or her memories for that matter. While physically they were identical, they each got assigned random personality attributes.
The current batch had a cowardly cookie-thief, a verbally abusive parkour expert, and a cheerful napper—amongst other things. What they didn't have was any particular need or compulsion to obey anyone. Whereas my human drones, created by me, were ultimately under my control, loyal to me when under their self-control, and capable of more direct manipulation at my whim.
These Annas were not made for my own purposes are were far more unpredictable. There were usually a few minutes of disorientation when they first came out of the growth vats, and I'd taken to using that time to shove them into a holding chamber.
This was where Crystal became useful.
Pausing outside the door, Crystal took a few moments to draw in a deep breath. Her skin began to shimmer as if she were encased in a thin layer of diamond. Protected, she walked through the door.
A board cracked against her skull and a bench slammed into her legs. The Annas were fond of escape attempts, at first.
"Enough," Crystal said, her voice echoing with authority.
Crystal had a Command core, it was one of the things that made her incredibly dangerous. Fortunately, the ability did not work on another District Lord. The city had its own way of settling disagreements between us.
An Anna clone paused with her fist just an inch short of Crystal's face. Crystal reached up to gently guide the hand down.
"Form a line at attention," Crystal said, and the Annas complied.